as usual with deaf people, speaks indistinctly. Few have not had such an experience as this. You are seated beside what appears to you to be a very amiable, comfortable, benign old lady. The beverage before you is in a condition which it would not be safe to swallow for a little. You are both resting on your oars, or rather on your spoons. The moment is favourable for an opening speech. The subject you select is one of personal and common interest. The observation you hazard is such as would in no event occasion a division bell to ring. Quietly you say, ‘The soup is hot.’ She inclines her face as if she had just heard you were talking in her direction. ‘The soup is hot.’ An inquiring glance is directed to you. Again you repeat rather louder, ‘The soup is hot.’ ‘Sir,’ she replies. In an alto and rather excited pitch you proclaim, ‘The soup is hot.’ By this time everybody has been turning a listening ear. ‘Beg your pardon, sir; but I am rather deaf.’ ‘Madam’ (in an altissimo and crescendo style), ‘The soup is HOT.’ ‘Yes,’ she blandly replies, ‘the room is very hot.’ You are for ever and for ever shut up, and retire from the struggle hot enough yourself.
But sometimes the wet blanket comes in another form. I was at one place agreeably set on several occasions beside a lively young German lady, who spoke English fluently. At our first interview I asked, ‘What was their national dish? was it Sauer-kraut?’ ‘No, it was larks.’ ‘Oh, you barbarians,’ I replied; ‘do you eat canaries and parrots?’ at which the fair damsel was much shocked. ‘What’s that?’ obviously whispers the heavy German next her on her other side, and this and every other like passage of nonsense had to be translated word for word into this intensely philomathic alien, but withal kindly guide, philosopher, and friend of my young neighbour.
I was for a considerable time at another place seated next a most intelligent member of the French bar, whose bad health unfortunately added to a natural taciturnity. He could speak English, and liked to do so. We formed ourselves into a mutual instruction society—I to correct his good English, and he to correct my bad French. But as he preferred English conversation, and I was too lazy to bore him with my French, the educational advantages on my side were reduced to the minimum visible. However, we enjoyed to some extent rational conversation on subjects of interest, imparting information to each other, and discussing where we differed. Here was ‘the feast of reason.’ But, though my friend could enjoy all that creates a laugh, ‘the flow of soul’ would not have produced a deluge, or even turned a mill-wheel of moderate dimensions. There is nothing so difficult as to get merry with those who speak another language, into which everything has mentally and slowly to be translated, and the flashes of merriment often will neither brook translation nor abide deliberative meditation. The ball must be kept up. Any efforts in that direction were therefore of a ponderous kind. Sometimes I would, with all due and becoming gravity, put a case to him in French law. ‘If,’ for example, I would say to him; ‘if a Frenchman were to die, leaving an estate as large as this room (a tolerably big one), and twelve children?’ ‘Oh, but,’ he would interpose, smiling, ‘we have no estates so small,’ and perhaps he might have added, ‘No families so large.’
From him I was shifted for a time to the agreeable society of a blooming Swedish lady, who could speak no language but her own, and who was uncommonly ready to imagine others were laughing at her, and accordingly to take offence. In this fix, to make the best of it, I returned to school to remedy the neglects of early life, and being a docile and apparently a reverent pupil, I advanced with such rapid strides to proficiency in the Swedish tongue, that in not many days I learnt that in that hitherto supposed outlandish language chrystal is ‘chrystal’ and knife is ‘knife;’ and had my studies been prolonged, I doubt not that I should in time have come to know that the honest Swedish people do call a spade a spade.
This interesting pursuit of knowledge under difficulties was, however, brought to an abrupt close by my being torn away and transferred to the company of an Irish young lady, from whom I speedily elicited that she came from the neighbourhood of Kilkenny. This was irresistible. ‘Have you seen the tails of the two cats?’ ‘Oh, yes’ (with a merry twinkle); ‘they are in the Kilkenny Museum.’ This museum may, like Aladdin’s palace, have been built up in a night; but ere twenty-four hours had elapsed, it was stocked from floor to ceiling with such marvellous rarities as by no possibility had been ever either dreamt of in philosophy, or, what is more, conceived in the fertile brain of the great Barnum.
In season places, such shiftings about are few and far between; but in touring localities, during the travelling season, when you are more or less frequently changing your own quarters, and all around are changing almost daily too, one is shuffled about like a card, and more vicissitudes of association are experienced than befell the noted Gil Blas of Santillane in the course of his eventful life.
The rule of the hotels seems to be that the latest comers take the bottom of the table, and move up according as those before them leave. At the same time this rule was frequently infringed, and in some places we had always to ask where to sit. Of course all meet on a footing of equality, and it is customary for those of title—especially for foreign titled persons, unless of the highest rank—to dine with the other visitors. On one occasion, at a small party of ten or twelve, an old gentleman appeared, to whom the ladies in the salon had, on his entrance, bowed profoundly. We afterwards learned from one of them he was a distinguished foreign prince. An English marchioness or an English duke will occasionally appear at table, but I fancy English noblemen rarely condescend to do so. We were, however, often finding that at the table with us were foreign persons of rank of all grades, and the foreigners of title with whom we became at all acquainted were always very friendly and unassuming. But generally in travelling we could not tell who were our neighbours. It was for the most part from the lists of visitors that the names of those in the hotel could be discovered, and occasionally these have been of royal rank. In this case they were necessarily notable, and although they did not come to the public table, yet they were seen in the gardens; and sometimes they travelled with large retinues, and could not escape observation. At Interlachen, General Grant and his wife came to the Jungfrau Hotel, at which we were. He was on the night of his arrival serenaded by a brass band, which played till near midnight, the musicians no doubt regarding the sweet and melodious sounds of trombones and ophicleides atoned for any disturbance of the slumber of the visitors, or even of the probably wearied General himself.
All the Continental hotels are, with few exceptions, prepared to take visitors upon pension—that is, on board. But there are establishments which, par excellence, are termed pensions. The line of demarcation is very slender, and some hotels are truly pensions, while some pensions are truly hotels. The pension strict, however, is a less grand house than the hotel. It is for the most part a large private house, without, though not always without, the parade of concierge and other distinctive marks of an hotel. As a rule, to which there are exceptions, it is more homely, there is less style in the method of conducting, less appearance about the rooms, and smaller attention paid to service and sanitary arrangements. On the other hand, the company is smaller, and as the people come to remain for periods of time, they fraternize better, and there is a good deal more of the home feeling in a pension than ever finds its way into any hotel. The better class of pensions profess to require an introduction, but it does not necessarily follow that the company is more select; on the contrary, as they are usually rather less expensive than hotels, the company is not unfrequently of a mixed description, and consequently the name pension is, to some extent, in disfavour with those English people who can afford to pay hotel charges, and prefer more style.
At hotels, the rule, sometimes relaxed for a party, is that people are not taken on pension under a week. A similar rule prevails in pensions proper, and indeed during pension season it is usually necessary to secure quarters in pensions proper, and even in hotels, by writing for rooms some considerable time previously.
The charge for pension varies very greatly, according to the place, to the situation of the rooms, and to the season.
In former days the pension charge was extremely moderate. One old gentleman told me that in his younger days the charge in Switzerland, at least, was 3 francs per day for everything; but this was a charge as against foreigners only, and he, then a young Englishman, succeeded in getting off upon this low rate by being taken for a German, he being with a party of Germans. Even